UrBC, Yekaterinburg, February 19, 2020. The number of bankruptcy claims placed with Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court rose by 80% last year against one year previously, President Justice Svetlana Tsvetkova said at a press conference in Yekaterinburg today.

‘The most noticeable increase in the number of claims was in bankruptcy ones: these went up by 80%. For one, 3,473 personal bankruptcy claims got placed with the court in 2019 [almost twice as many as in 2018 - Ed.], along with 2,041 insolvency claims relating to legal entities [1.5 times as many as in 2018 - Ed.], and 222 claims relating to sole trader bankruptcies. This latter category has been growing as well. This means private individuals, businesses, and sole traders all resort to this financial restructuring procedure because they’re unable to pay off their debt to creditors,’ Tsvetkova said.

According to Tsvetkova, creditors whose claims don’t get settled through the debtor’s assets often resort to other ways of protecting their rights, that is, they make former managers and founders of a business bear subsidiary liability.